1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical image display apparatus, method, and program, and more particularly to a medical image display apparatus, method, and program for displaying, when a lesion character in an image reading report is specified, an image of the lesion area.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, medical image display technologies for reconstructing and displaying medical images have been evolving and serving as assistance in image diagnosis performed in the medical field as described, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication Nos. 5 (1993)-189541 and 7 (1995)-021405.
In image diagnoses using medical images, in general, diagnosticians make diagnoses with reference to image reading reports generated by radiologists. Some image reading reports allow a reference image to be linked to a character string in the reports as described, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-301453. Use of such image reading reports allows the radiological image reader to display a corresponding image by simply specifying a character described in the report.
Although, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-301453 allows reference to the medical image corresponding to the character string in the image reading report, the position where the lesion area described in the image reading report is present or the character string representing the corresponding lesion cannot be known from the medical image itself.
Further, it has been difficult to accurately recognized as to which position in the medical image the lesion described in the image reading report corresponds to, as one medical image is linked to one character string in the image reading report.
In view of the circumstances described above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a medical image display apparatus, method, and program that allows more accurate image interpretation by displaying lesion information described in an image reading report in a medical image.